Riots Spurred by: (A) Bad Economy; (B) Lakers Fans; or (C) Both?

Right after the Lakers’ win tonight, fans, some non-fans, and other folk jonesing for a little mob mentality coalesced to celebrate with a bit of a riot downtown. Is this scene a sign of class warfare erupting – plebeians angry with the downturn economy and impotent social services using this victory as an excuse to throw rocks at the authorities – or is this just a couple of bum idiots (“knuckleheads” as Chief Bratton called them) who thought a victory dance to the tunes of arson and violence was the appropriate response? Perhaps a little of both. In any case, it’s 11:30pm, well after the game, and the news outlets still show people smashing up stores and derailing Metro bus lines. Now I wonder what these people/we will do when the economy sours even more, the unemployment rates continue to skyrocket, and we find ourselves forced to choose between dinner and a doctor’s visit. Stay tuned…

Sadly, I don’t think we can blame this on economic woes. This sort of thing has happened before in much better financial times, and it’ll probably happen again. It’s just knuckleheads being knuckleheads. I’ve never understood what makes someone think it’s a good idea to celebrate a championship by destroying things and lighting stuff on fire. Perhaps that means I’m likely not a knucklehead myself. At least there’s that.

and we find ourselves forced to choose between dinner and a doctor’s visit

That precise scenario happened to me in April of this year, producing a wicked domino effect that finds me losing my apartment on July 1; the worst part of the downward spiral was watching helplessly as it accelerated — not necessarily out of control either, there was a certain self-contained logic to the initial trigger (the choice between dinner and the doctor’s care) and the chaos that followed. Sort of like how a riot forms.

Smashing cars and stealing shoes from stores after a sporting event being a form of protest against the economy? Give me a fucking break. It’s beer fueled mob mentality, nothing more.

Yes, the economic situation is not great, but we aren’t even near the situation people faced in the Great Depression. Seeing looters wearing team jerseys tells me that they aren’t so poor, that they can’t afford the luxury items.

There are times where public insurrection is valid and even necessary, but the Lakers winning the championship ain’t one of them.

It seems that the psychology of what happened ( as cobbled together via eyewitness accounts) had more to do with a situation where the crowd thought they had driven away the police and thus ‘won’ some battle. That’s when what was merely very gregarious, drunken celebrating turned violent.